Butterfly Beach Sunset

These two casein paintings (one 16×16″ and one 14×18″) are two of about a dozen sweet atmospheric moments that dissolved into each other as the sun fell. The gold one I started when the sky was blue trying to anticipate what things would look like later. The other I made from memory and a photo of what it looked like in the pink stages. It is a challenge to develop a plein air technique for things that last just an instant— and usually the more fleeting something is, the more beautiful.